NASA's Perseverance Mars rover fails to retrieve rock in search of extraterrestrial life

The rover carries 43 titanium sample tubes and is exploring Jezero Crater, where it will be gathering samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for future analysis on Earth.

Washington: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Mars rover Perseverance has failed in its first attempt to grab rock samples on Mars for future return to Earth. The car-sized Perseverance landed inside the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater this past February with an objective to search for signs of ancient microbial life. The American space agency in a statement said that data sent to Earth by NASA’s Perseverance rover after its first attempt to "collect a rock sample on Mars and seal it in a sample tube indicate that no rock was collected during the initial sampling activity."